Failed Writer's Journey: Helen DeWitt is Leon Lett and You are Not.

Leon Lett, speaking as a Cowboy fan, was a joy to watch football. He was a defensive lineman, and an excellent one. He terrorized quarterbacks and treat balls thrown low in his direction as a personal affront, smacking them into the turf with the disdain a teenager has for her parents. He helped the Cowboys win three Super Bowls — and also had two of the dumbest plays in NFL history.

In the first, he held the ball out — in a Super Bowl! — behind him as he as returning a fumble recovery for what should have been a touchdown. But because he held the ball out behind him, one of his opponents was able to knock it out of his hand, costing his team the touchdown (the Cowboys won that Super Bowl anyway). In the other, the Cowboys blocked a last moment field goal. If they had just let it sit, they would have won the game. Unfortunately, Lett forgot that the ball was dead unless touched by the blocking team and came barreling in, sliding onto the ball and letting the opposing team recover it and thus kick the game wining field goal for a second time. In neither case did Lett suffer any consequences, beyond ridicule. This on a team where a third string player had been cut for sleeping in a meeting. Why? Because he was Leon Lett, star player, destroyer of offensive lines. Which brings us to Helen DeWitt.

Helen DeWitt, if you do not know, wrote the Last Samurai. It is a brilliant book, one of the best novels of the century. A foundation offered Helen DeWitt a $175,000 dollar prize for being a good writer. The prize came with promotional commitments that DeWitt did not feel she could do. Ms. DeWitt is, to be find, not especially tech savvy and not especially gregarious. At one point in this saga, she claimed she could not respond on time to a request from the foundation becasue she had used up all her data playing mahjong on her phone. Another time, she reasonably implied that Thomas Pynchon would never be asked to do this shit. The foundation withdrew its award. All well and good — the reward had conditions and Ms. DeWitt didn’t want to fulfill them. Except the internet lost its collective mind at Helen DeWitt.

She was accused of being privileged, of throwing away an opportunity most would kill for, of betraying writers by not just being online enough. What she was asked to do was relatively easy — why didn’t she do it? Why did she get to behave that way? Because she is a literary Leon Lett and the rules are different sometimes for people who are obviously more talented that others. And that is mostly fine. Helen DeWitt earned her weird behavior (look, she wrote about this on her blog. The woman is clearly not a naif in the technology woods, at least not entirely) by being a great writer that people want to give rewards to. She doesn’t have t play the internet games, and so she doesn’t. And that should be fine. I would argue that more people should be trying to be like her than make her like the too online crowd publishing houses insist, against all evidence, sell books.

In conclusion: Leon Lett was awesome.

Uncomfortable Self Promotion

Nope, still haven’t sold anything. And don’t worry, the Weekly Word Count will return next time (about 15 page, by the by). But someone has suggested my next idea would be a good fit for Royal Road, a website where people self publish fantasy stories. So I thought I would put up an older work (one that did well with the writing group and got a couple manuscript requests but ultimately did not land me an agent) and see how it functioned. It’s about a third up, with the rest scheduled to be posted once each morning. I was curious if people would leave critiques (not so far), what it looked like in terms of an organic audience (small, unsurprisingly), etc.

I hesitated to mention this. I am not good at self-promotion (says the man with the newsletter) and it feels odd mentioning something that wasn’t good enough to get an agent. But a couple of people have asked, and some others have suggested this is good practice. So if you want to read an example of why I am a failed writer, you can see it here.

Have a great weekend, everyone.